Google invests in two Indian short-video apps on the same day – both of which offer content in local languages

• Google has invested in two short-video platforms in India on the same day – Glance which owns Roposo as well as DailyHunt’s parent company VerSe Innovations which runs Josh.
• Interestingly, both Roposo and Josh offer content in local languages and are looking to cater to India’s Bharat users.
• The investments come in from Google’s $10 billion fund – the same fund from which it has backed Reliance Jio.

It looks like global tech giant Google is looking to take over the space left behind by the ban of Bytedance’s TikTok in India. Google has invested in two short-video platforms in India on the same day – Glance which owns Roposo as well as DailyHunt’s parent company VerSe Innovations which runs Josh.

Interestingly, both Roposo and Josh offer content in local languages and are looking to cater to India’s Bharat users.

During the Google for India event, the global tech giant announced a $10 billion investment plan for India, from which it had also announced a $4.5 billion funding in Reliance Jio.

The company’s CEO Sundar Pichai had then said that one of the four areas where they will invest is in companies “enabling affordable access and information for every Indian in their own language, whether it’s Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi or any other”.

“Still too many Indians have trouble finding content to read or services they can use confidently, in their own language. And this significantly limits the value of the internet for them, particularly at a time like this when the internet is the lifeline of so many people. This investment underlines our strong belief in working with India’s innovative startups towards the shared goal of building a truly inclusive digital economy that will benefit everyone,” said Caesar Sengupta, VP, Google in a statement.

According to reports, Google was also in talks with another content and short-video platform Sharechat for a billion dollar buyout.

Roposo in numbers

Roposo is owned by Glance, which is a subsidiary of Indian unicorn InMobi. Glance has raised $145 Million from Google as well as its existing investor Mithril Capital.

With the latest investment, the company aims to deepen its AI capability across Glance and Roposo, expand its technology team, launch services on the platform, and drive expansion in global markets

Josh in numbers

The other investment from Google has come through for DailyHunt’s take on TikTok – the short video platform Josh. The news aggregator platform had launched Josh after the ban on TikTok in India, in 12 local Indian languages to capture the “Bharat” users, the term used for the next 200 million internet users in India.

With this, DailyHunt’s parent company VerSe Innovation has crossed a valuation of over a billion dollars, making it the latest unicorn in India.

DailyHunt has raised the funding from Google along with Microsoft and AlphaWave, a Falcon Edge Capital unit.

SEE ALSO:
Google, Microsoft invest in DailyHunt for its short video platform Josh – making it the latest unicorn in India
Cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX has raised $20 million since the pandemic broke out⁠ — the founder says he is hiring aggressively as volumes have tripled
This man spent almost ₹50 lakh, let go of his 3BHK dream to run a ‘Rice ATM’ for the needy in Hyderabad